Everything you Need to Know About Buying Expired Domains

On a daily basis, thousands of domains get expired.

An expired domain is a domain that the owner failed to renew. This would have happened for many reasons. The owner might have forgotten to renew, payment would not have been successful, went out of business, or perhaps the company wants to rebrand themselves and leave the old name behind.

Once a domain is not renewed within 30 days after expiration, it enters a hold period also known as the redemption period for another 30 days. Even then, if the owner of the domain fails to renew, then the domain will be available for others to buy via an auction.

• If you are looking to get a head start in your SEO game, or you found the domain name upon which you can build your own website, you will definitely find some value in buying an expired domain.
• Below are some ways through which you can use expired domains, as well as things to look for when buying an expired domain name.

How to get the most out of Expired Domains?

If you purchase an expired domain name, here are some of the ways you can utilize it.

• Build an authority website - When you purchase a new website, you have to work twice as hard to build up its authority. With an expired domain, you can leverage its existing SEO value and rank quickly
• Use it for backlinking - You can use this website for linking to your main website or blog. This way, you can transfer the link of the old domain to your main website. However, you have to still add content to the old website to make it look natural. You also need to make sure they don’t have identical IP addresses and are not hosted on the same server
• Redirect the site - If you want to transfer the link juice of the expired site to your main website, you can simply do a 301-redirect. This way, you can save yourself from setting up a mini-site. Here’s Matt Cutts’s answer to a question about PageRank damping factors across 301 redirects.

• Sell it for a profit - You can simply purchase an expired domain to sell it again. This process is known as domain flipping

Note - To experience the above benefits, the expired domain you purchase must be similar to your industry.

How to Check the Value of an Expired Domain Before Purchasing?

You should not buy an expired domain just because you get a good deal. Not all expired domains are of equal value, and you will end up making a bad purchasing decision.

So, before you purchase an expired domain, here are some things to consider.

• Age of the domain - Make sure it is an established domain. You should not buy one that has expired after 1 year of purchase
• Backlink quality - Use a backlink checker to check the quality of the backlinks. If it looks spammy and low in quality, don’t buy it. Some possible spam indicators are non-English language, hacked content, keyword stuffing, duplicate content, and porn/unsafe content
• Website quality - Use Wayback Machine to find out how the website used to look. For example, through this method, you can find out if that website was used as a link farm.
• Check MOZ ranking - Use the tool to check the Page Authority (PA), Domain Authority (DA), and traffic, which is calculated based on the website history and backlinks. If it has a low PA, DA, and traffic, avoid purchasing it.
• Check for search engine bans - Make sure the domain was not banned from any search engines. If it was, then it will not have any value. For example, here is a website that will allow you to see if Google banned the site. You can also perform a check on the AdSense Sandbox Checker
• Search engine index - The expired domain you plan on purchasing must be present on the search engine index. For example, you can check if the website is present on the Google index by following the procedure on this page
• Citation and Trust Flow - When you buy an expired domain with backlinks, you should not just check for the raw citation flow. You must check for the quality of the domains from which the links are coming from. A tool called Majestic will help you check trust flow metrics for backlinks

What Are the Best Places to Buy Expired Domains?

There are various marketplaces from which you can purchase high quality expired domain names. Here are a few websites.

In Conclusion

Buying an expired domain can have huge SEO benefits. If you want to monetize your website, the backlinks, traffic, and other metrics of an expired domain may help you climb the top in less amount of time.

Always proceed with caution to ensure the domain you purchase gets you good results. Whether you plan to use the expired domain as your new website or want to start a PBN, consider the points we outlined in this article.

Have you purchased an expired domain? How did you use it? Do share your experience in the comments section below.